It DIdn't Take Long For The Vatican Whitewash

Pope Frankie the Religious Rock Star made a solemn pronouncement today, regarding child rape and torture within the RCC. Make sure you're seated when you read this. And, make sure there's something soft under your jaw when it drops.

"Pope Francis has defended the Roman Catholic Church saying ‘no-one has done more’ to root out paedophilia.'"

In a further effort to shovel more bullshit than found in a Kansas stockyard, the Pontiff said,

"The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No-one else has done more. Yet the Church is the only one to have been attacked.”

He also praised his predecessor Pope Benedict for his work on the issue. Yes, you read that right. He actually praised his predecessor. You know, the one who did all the cover up the molestation of children. Yeah. That Benedict.

And, this comes on the heels of the recent United Nations report condemning the RCC for its knowing cover ups, and further condemning that institution for adopting policies and practices which led to the continuation of abuse by the clergy.

Replies to This Discussion

Just who the F*** does Frankie think HE's kidding? What about the document prepared by the office of Pope John XXIII, instructing bishops worldwide to deal with this issue:

in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication.

There are cases upon cases on top of this, where people wanted to get satisfaction from the Holy See, only to be delayed, sandbagged and denied outright. Let's not forget those deaf students documented in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, and they are a handful among thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.

If the Vatican had been utterly transparent about this matter, there would no longer BE a Vatican, as I've pointed out repeatedly here and elsewhere. There would be uncountable arrests, trials and convictions. Civil trials would decimate their untold wealth and ruin their reputations. The name of catholicism would be MUD, not just with those of us who are atheists, but with EVERYONE.

Yeah, Pat ... Francis the Talking Mule just stepped in his own crap ... big-time.

Francis the Talking Mule is 100% correct. He's shown hugging a disabled man, washing the feet of others, and everyone swoons over this worthless, f***ing fraud. I had a strong suspicion when he was named as the new Vicar of Christ, there would be no changes in this bureaucratic morass of degeneracy, notwithstanding his phony public image. The real face of evil has shown itself, yet once again.

No, they're not untouchable. The problem is volition - the willingness to touch that which heretofore has remained exempt from vulnerability. There is a lack of boldness, borne of the very indoctrination we rant against, indoctrination which says that faith is somehow good and wholesome as a matter of course, even when all the evidence speaks against that supposed truth. People are slow to shake themselves out of their stupor ... and as Morpheus said in The Matrix, anyone who remains plugged into the system is potentially an agent - an enemy.

No, these enemies are almost certainly not carrying a Desert Eagle, any more than they're wearing sunglasses and have a monitor plugged into their ear ... but they're not with us ... and it's going to take a lot more than "The One" to awaken them to the truth.

To all the people who have praised Frankie for the humanness and humility that he's brought to the leadership of his organization, I guess all I I can say to them is that the honeymoon is officially over. One can only hope that his followers are smart enough and rational enough to see this.........but I highly doubt it.

Yeah, I was one of those who praised this new pope and held out hope that things might progress along a more upstanding and responsible line. But my disappointment now mingles with the disappointment I've had over every other religious leader who could make a difference and chooses not to. They can hide their heads in the sand, but it doesn't change the facts. The RCC will bring about it's own demise by not embracing their past mistakes and trying to correct them.

As long as the Catholic church requires celibacy in their priests, such problems will continue. Celibacy is a huge burden on the priest. And perhaps a job which requires celibacy, attracts men who are sexually abnormal.

That requirement might be eliminated, maybe even within our lifetimes... the sooner the better!

The article The Flying Atheist shared (about Francis's popularity not translating into more Americans identifying as Catholic or going to Mass more often) also noted that significantly more respondents expect that Roman Catholic priests will be allowed to marry by 2050 (51%, vs. 39% a year ago). There were also slight increases in people expecting artificial birth control to be allowed and women to be ordained.

In any case, ordinary Catholics remain far ahead of the church's authorities:

"Regardless of their expectations about what the Church will do, large majorities of Catholics say the Church should allow Catholics to use birth control (77 percent), allow priests to get married (72 percent) and ordain women as priests (68 percent)."

"Half of Catholics say the Church should recognise the marriages of gay and lesbian couples."

(A tangent: I mightily confused a friend recently when I mentioned a priest and "she" in the same sentence... and when I went on to mention her wife. That priest is Episcopalian -- a denomination that's currently headed by a female Presiding Bishop.)

(And another: I still fantasize that Pope Francis, or else a successor in the near future, will see reason and issue a pronouncement much like the ringing farewell speech that Alan Perlman suggested last year for Benedict's retirement! As Alan said, a pure pipe dream... still good reading!)

Basicly they cling to the belief that it will all go away, and I think they believe that punking little boys in the ass isn't real sex. You cannot un-do the past, but you can change the future here by allowing the preists to marry. If you do not agree with this, then you would have to believe that all the priests were gay in the first place. Deep down this is where the myth of gay men attacking little boys comes from.

To illustrate this thinking let's look at a scenario from my Army training in the 1960's. The main reason the military did not want gays (aside from the fact that they might try to convert the straight man) is that you could not trust gays in wartime. Imagine that a gay man is captured and they temp him with a penis. He gives in and tells the secrets they are after. LOL

DUH! Well, let's imagine a straight man who is tempted with a woman and a vagina! Bad arguement but the myths set in.

I have a hard time thinking that they believe this is all just going to go away on their say-so. That would reflect either a colossal naivete or an equally monstrous state of delusion. Their followers may suffer from one or the other to various degrees; those in the upper echelons at least SHOULD have a somewhat better orientation to reality. At minimum, they should know that they're in deep sneakers, that a great deal of their manipulations of the whole child abuse scandal is now in the public domain, and that SOMETHING eventually will have to be done about it.

What I see here myself is more of a holding action while the Vatican slowly but surely comes to terms with what that "something" is - acknowledging their fault and paying for it. This is a travesty which would instantly ruin a lesser organization, but the RCC is by no means your run-of-the-mill outfit. They've held the keys to a great number of people's hearts and minds for nearly two millennia, built up a reputation and respect, though virtually all of it from whole cloth, and such social inertia isn't dispelled overnight, any more than any misguided thoughts they may once have had that they could just brush it away would be equally dismissed.

So long as the pressure from the outside remains unabated and indeed, as new incidents of child molestation continue to surface, those in the Holy See will find their feet held to the fire until such time as they recognize both their culpability and the need to act to resolve the situation. And if there has been delay, it's because they recognize as we do that the Roman Catholic Church will never be the same afterward.

(Reuters) - One year after his election, Pope Francis is "immensely popular among American Catholics," a survey said on Thursday, but there is no sign of a "Francis effect" inspiring more to attend Mass or do volunteer work.

"There has been no measurable rise in the percentage of Americans who identify as Catholic," the survey said. "Nor has there been a statistically significant change in how often Catholics say they go to Mass."

Some disappointment rang through in comments on how Francis is doing his job. In his lowest rating, only 54 percent said he was addressing the clerical sexual abuse scandal well.

U.S. Catholics rated the abuse scandal the most important issue for the new pope in a Pew survey in March 2013.